Poirot blinked and was accosted by the Dutch girl to whom he had given a lift the day before.
"So you have come to the fкte," he said. "And your friend?"
"Oh, yes, she, too, comes here this afternoon. I have not seen her yet, but we shall leave together by the bus that goes from the gates at five-fifteen. We go to Torquay and there I change to another bus for Plymouth. It is convenient."
This explained what had puzzled Poirot, the fact that the Dutch girl was perspiring under the weight of a rucksack.
He said: "I saw your friend this morning."
"Oh, yes, Elsa, a German girl, was with her and she told me they had tried to get through woods to the river and quay. And the gentleman who owns the house was very angry and made them go back."
She added, turning her head to where Sir George was urging competitors at the coconut shy:
"But now - this afternoon, he is very polite."
Poirot considered explaining that there was a difference between young women who were trespassers and the same young women when they had paid two shillings and sixpence entrance fee and were legally entitled to sample the delights of Nasse House and its grounds. But Captain Warburton and his megaphone bore down upon him. The Captain was looking hot and bothered.
"Have you seen Lady Stubbs, Poirot? Anyone seen Lady Stubbs? She's supposed to be judging this Fancy Dress business and I can't find her anywhere."
"I saw her, let me see - oh, about half an hour ago. But then I went to have my fortune told."
"Curse the woman," said Warburton angrily. "Where can she have disappeared to? The children are waiting and we're behind schedule as it is."
He looked round.
"Where's Amanda Brewis?"
Miss Brewis, also, was not in evidence.
"It really is too bad," said Warburton. "One's got to have some co-operation if one's trying to run a show. Where can Hattie be? Perhaps she's gone into the house."
He strode off rapidly.
Poirot edged his way towards the roped-off space where teas were being served in a large marquee, but there was a long waiting queue and he decided against it.
He inspected the Fancy Goods stall where a determined old lady very nearly managed to sell him a plastic collar box, and finally made his way round the outskirts to a place where he could contemplate the activity from a safe distance.
He wondered where Mrs Oliver was.
Footsteps behind him made him turn his head. A young man was coming up the path from the quay; a very dark young man, faultlessly attired in yachting costume. He paused as though disconcerted by the scene before him.
Then he spoke hesitatingly to Poirot.
"You will excuse me. Is this the house of Sir Georges Stubbs?"
"It is indeed." Poirot paused and then hazarded a guess. "Are you, perhaps, the cousin of Lady Stubbs?"
"I am Etienne de Sousa -"
"My name is Hercule Poirot."
They bowed to each other. Poirot explained the circumstances of the fкte. As he finished, Sir George came across the lawn towards them from the coconut shy.
"De Sousa? Delighted to see you. Hattie got your letter this morning. Where's your yacht?"
"It is moored at Helmmouth. I came up the river to the quay here in my launch."
"We must find Hattie. She's somewhere about... You'll dine with us this evening, I hope?"
"You are most kind."
"Can we put you up?"
"That also is most kind, but I will sleep on my yacht. It is easier so."
"Are you staying here long?"
"Two or three days, perhaps. It depends." De Sousa shrugged elegant shoulders.
"Hattie will be delighted, I'm sure," said Sir George politely. "Where is she? I saw her not long ago."
He looked round in a perplexed manner.
"She ought to be judging the children's fancy dress. I can't understand it. Excuse me a moment. I'll ask Miss Brewis."
He hurried off. De Sousa looked after him. Poirot looked at De Sousa.
"It is some little time since you last saw your cousin?" he asked.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"I have not seen her since she was fifteen years old. Soon after that she was sent abroad - to school at a convent in France. As a child she promised to have good looks."
He looked inquiringly at Poirot.
"She is a beautiful woman," said Poirot.
"And that is her husband? He seems what they call 'a good fellow,' but not perhaps very polished? Still, for Hattie it might be perhaps a little difficult to find a suitable husband."
Poirot remained with a politely inquiring expression on his face. The other laughed.
"Oh, it is no secret. At fifteen Hattie was mentally undeveloped. Feeble minded, do you not call it? She is still the same?"
"It would seem so - yes," said Poirot cautiously.
De Sousa shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, well! Why should one ask it of women - that they should be intelligent? It is not necessary."
Sir George was back, fuming. Miss Brewis was with him, speaking rather breathlessly.
"I've no idea where she is, Sir George. I saw her over by the fortune teller's tent last. But that was at least twenty minutes or half an hour ago. She's not in the house."
"Is it not possible," asked Poirot, "that she has gone to observe the progress of Mrs Oliver's murder hunt?"
Sir George's brow cleared.
"That's probably it. Look here, I can't leave the shows here. I'm in charge. And Amanda's got her hands full. Could you possibly have a look round, Poirot? You know the course."
But Poirot did not know the course. However, an inquiry of Miss Brewis gave him rough guidance. Miss Brewis took brisk charge of De Sousa and Poirot went off murmuring to himself, like an incantation:
"Tennis Court, Camellia Garden, The Folly, Upper Nursery Garden, Boathouse..."
As he passed the coconut shy he was amused to notice Sir George proffering wooden balls with a dazzling smile of welcome to the same young Italian woman whom he had driven off that morning and who was clearly puzzled at his change of attitude.
He went on his way to the tennis court. But there was no one there but an old gentleman of military aspect who was fast asleep on a garden seat with his hat pulled over his eyes. Poirot retraced his steps to the house and went on down to the camellia garden.
In the camellia garden Poirot found Mrs Oliver dressed in purple splendour, sitting on a garden seat in a brooding attitude, and looking rather like Mrs Siddons. She beckoned him to the seat beside her.
"This is only the second clue," she hissed. "I think I've made them too difficult. Nobody's come yet."
At this moment a young man in shorts, with a prominent Adam's apple, entered the garden. With a cry of satisfaction he hurried to a tree in one corner and a further satisfied cry announced his discovery of the next clue. Passing them, he felt impelled to communicate his satisfaction.
"Lots of people don't know about cork trees," he said confidentially. "Clever photograph, the first clue, but I spotted what it was - section of a tennis net. There was a poison bottle, empty, and a cork. Most of 'em will go all out after the bottle clue - I guessed it was a red herring. Very delicate, cork trees, only hardy in this part of the world. I'm interested in rare shrubs and trees. Now where does one go, I wonder?"
He frowned over the entry in the notebook he carried.
"I've copied the next clue but it doesn't seem to make sense." He eyed them suspiciously. "You competing?"
"Oh, no," said Mrs Oliver. "We're just - looking on."
"Righty-ho... 'When lovely woman stoops to folly.'... I've an idea I've heard that somewhere."
"It is a well-known quotation," said Poirot.
"A Folly can also be a building," said Mrs Oliver helpfully. "White - with pillars," she added.
"That's an idea! Thanks a lot. They say Mrs Ariadne Oliver is down here herself somewhere about. I'd like to get her autograph. You haven't seen her about, have you?"
"No," said Mrs Oliver firmly.
"I'd like to meet her. Good yarns she writes." He lowered his voice. "But they say she drinks like a fish."
He hurried off and Mrs Oliver said indignantly:
"Really! That's most unfair when I only like lemonade!"
"And have you not just perpetrated the great unfairness in helping that young man towards the next clue?"
"Considering he's the only one who's got here so far, I thought he ought to be encouraged."
"But you wouldn't give him your autograph."
"That's different," said Mrs Oliver. "Sh! Here come some more."
But these were not clue hunters. They were two women who having paid for admittance were determined to get their money's worth by seeing the grounds thoroughly.
They were hot and dissatisfied.
"You'd think they'd have some nice flower-beds," said one to the other. "Nothing but trees and more trees. It's not what I call a garden."
Mrs Oliver nudged Poirot, and they slipped quietly away.
"Supposing," said Mrs Oliver distractedly, "that nobody ever finds my body?"
"Patience, Madame, and courage," said Poirot. "The afternoon is still young."
"That's true," said Mrs Oliver brightening. "And it's half-price admission after four-thirty, so probably lots of people will flock in. Let's go and see how that Marlene child is getting on. I don't really trust that girl, you know. No sense of responsibility. I wouldn't put it past her to sneak away quietly, instead of being a corpse, and go and have tea. You know what people are like about their teas."
They proceeded amicably along the woodland path and Poirot commented on the geography of the property.
"I find it very confusing," he said. "So many paths, and one is never sure where they lead. And trees, trees everywhere."
"You sound like that disgruntled woman we've just left."
They passed the Folly and zig-zagged down the path to the river. The outlines of the boathouse showed beneath them.
Poirot remarked that it would be awkward if the murder searchers were to light upon the boathouse and find the body by accident.
"A sort of short cut? I thought of that. That's why the last clue is just a key. You can't unlock the door without it. It's a Yale. You can only open it from the inside."
A short steep slope led down to the door of the boathouse which was built out over the river, with a little wharf and a storage place for boats underneath. Mrs Oliver took a key from a pocket concealed amongst her purple folds and unlocked the door.
"We've just come to cheer you up, Marlene," she said brightly as she entered.
She felt slightly remorseful at her unjust suspicions of Marlene's loyalty, for Marlene, artistically arranged as "the body," was playing her part nobly, sprawled on the floor by the window.
Marlene made no response. She lay quite motionless. The wind blowing gently through the open window rustled a pile of "comics" spread out on the table.
"It's all right," said Mrs Oliver impatiently. "It's only me and M. Poirot. Nobody's got any distance with the clues yet."
Poirot was frowning. Very gently he pushed Mrs Oliver aside and went and bent over the girl on the floor. A suppressed exclamation came from his lips. He looked up at Mrs Oliver.
"So..." he said. "That which you expected has happened."
"You don't mean..." Mrs Oliver's eyes widened in horror. She grasped for one of the basket chairs and sat down. "You can't mean... She isn't dead?"
Poirot nodded.
"Oh, yes," he said. "She is dead. Though not very long dead."
"But how -?"
He lifted the corner of the gay scarf bound round the girl's head, so that Mrs Oliver could see the ends of the clothes line.
"Just like my murder," said Mrs Oliver unsteadily. "But who? And why?"
"That is the question," said Poirot.
He forbore to add that those had also been her questions.
And that the answers to them could not be her answers, since the victim was not the Yugoslavian first wife of an Atom Scientist, but Marlene Tucker, a fourteen-year-old village girl who, as far as was known, had not an enemy in the world.
Chapter 7
Detective Inspector Bland sat behind a table in the study. Sir George had met him on arrival, had taken him down to the boathouse and had now returned with him to the house. Down at the boathouse a photographic unit was now busy and the fingerprint men and the medical officer had just arrived.
"This do for you here all right?" asked Sir George.
"Very nicely, thank you, sir."
"What am I to do about this show that's going on, tell 'em about it, stop it, or what?"
Inspector Bland considered for a moment or two.
"What have you done so far, Sir George?" he asked.
"Haven't said anything. There's a sort of idea floating round that there's been an accident. Nothing more than that. I don't think anyone's suspected yet that it's - er - well, murder."
"Then leave things as they are just for the moment," decided Bland. "The news will get round fast enough, I dare say," he added cynically. He thought again for a moment or two before asking, "How many people do you think there are at this affair?"
"Couple of hundred I should say," answered Sir George, "and more pouring in every moment. People seem to have come from a good long way round. In fact the whole thing's being a roaring success. Damned unfortunate."
Inspector Bland inferred correctly that it was the murder an not the success of the fкte to which Sir George was referring.
"A couple of hundred," he mused, "and any one of them I suppose could have done it."
He sighed.
"Tricky, said Sir George sympathetically. "But I don't see what reason any one of them could have had. The whole thing seems quite fantastic - don't see who would want to go murdering a girl like that."
